Today's communication networks provide information transport of voice, video and data to both residential and commercial customers with more and more of those customers being connected by fiber optic cables. Current network designs differ among carriers, or service providers, and are influenced by such variables as legacy equipment and architectures, past and present infrastructure investments and network types. These network types include the Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON), the Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) and the Hybrid Fiber-Coaxial (HFC) networks, to name just a few.
A fiber optic cable (or “fiber bundle”) includes a number of individual optical fibers, each of which may be used to transmit significant quantities of information. Some fiber optic network designs include the use of passive components such as optical splitters and wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) filters as a way of creating and deploying a more cost effective and efficient access network.
Individual fibers within a larger fiber bundle are generally coated, but are very thin, and are susceptible to damage if mishandled, or if bent beyond a permissible bend radius. In the past, splicing tray designs have accounted for the mounting of splice protection sleeves and for the permissible bend radius of individual fibers, but have nonetheless failed to consider passive component integration to the tray or to prevent damage to fibers in certain configurations.
Certain fiber optic applications also require different sizes of optical fibers and optical fibers splices to be handled within a fiber optic tray. These applications require fiber optic splice holders that can accommodate more than one diameter for the fibers and fiber splices inserted therein.